Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

Muppets, he says.

——

You know they’ve wanted me on?

Who, John?

The Muppets.

Ah yeah.

They’ve made approaches three fucking times.

Cornelius grins.

Okay, he says.

Honestly.

I see.

For real!

Cornelius thinks about it for a bit, and shrugs.

I suppose they had Elton John on the other week.

No surprise there.

He was superb, John.

Did you really, really think so?

I did.

No accounting.

Are you going on, John?

I’m not.

Why not?

It’d be too fucking whimsical. Anyway the technical fact is I’m retired, Cornelius.

Hah?

And not being a dry arse but it’d be too light. You’ve got to play along with all the routines. You’ve got to do the hokey cokey with Miss fucking Piggy. You’ve got to do all the wisecracks with the frog. And to be honest, Cornelius, I don’t know if I’m in the mood these days.

I think you should go on, John.

Really?

What harm in it?

Well…

It might take you out of yourself, John.

I suppose it might.

——

Night drags itself across the hills like a weary neighbour, acheful and slowly, one drugged foot at a time, and he takes — himself wilting — to the dead father’s room. It is a room hushed with odd feeling and the boards creak beneath his monkey feet. As he settles between the ice-cold sheets, there are streaks of grey light still in webs across the Maytime. He drags a curtain against the world and sky. The ocean is out there, too, and moving — he can hear it as he puts his head down, and he wishes again for love and home. He falls at once to a heavy, troubled sleep.

Why should I run the way that I run?

——

He wakes to an unknown darkness. He is unsettled by a dream. Its shapes hold for a moment but fade as quick. He comes up to himself slowly, as though through dark water. He is in the dead father’s room. Okay. There is a wardrobe full of old suits. It sits there like an accusation. All burly-shouldered and dour, this wardrobe. Now this was a life here once, as though to say. The arms and the legs of it. He feels that meek in its presence. He sits up in the bed. The wind rises and moves through the house again. He gets up from the bed and parts the curtain and looks on down the night. It is so clear and all the stars are out. He looks on down the sky, the way it falls away from the mountain, the night-blue and gasses, which is tremendous to a man in his T-shirt and shorts at four in the morning. Oh but that fucking wardrobe. The wardrobe is a presence in the room.

Don’t be scared, John.

He goes to the wardrobe. He runs his hand through the suits in there. It gives a shivery feeling. He takes one out. It is very old and heavy. A word appears in his mouth — worsted. An old-fashioned word — two slow farmer syllables. Wor-sted. West Country farmer. Pebbles in the mouth. Wooor-sted. The material is a silvery blue in the night. The suit looks as if it would be a fit or just about.

Death be good to him, he says, and he slips an arm into a sleeve. He shucks the other in — it’s perfect. He tries the trousers and they go on just right, too. He tries out the voice in a whisper then—

Well?

He is up the hills. He has a black collie with a patch eye. He has a great knobbly blackthorn stick. The dog runs the edges of the field that fall down to the stone walls and sea. He whistles for the dog. He can hear him come back through the long wet grass. He can hear his panting and the parting of the grass. The bay beneath is so placid. He pulls back the wardrobe door for the mirror inside, for the dark-stained silver, and he stands before it, and cries—

Darkie! C’mere, Darkie!

Cornelius appears in the doorway and is pale himself as the risen dead.

John?

Yes, Cornelius?

How did you know the dog’s name?

——

Look. There is nothing for it, John. It’s half past midnight and the clock doesn’t lie. Sleep is shot and sleep is done for. You have the whole house woke. We’ll have to go out for a while. There is nothing else for it. We’ll go and have a few drinks and try relax ourselves.

At half past twelve?

They’ll only be getting going above in the Highwood, John.

Above in the fucking where?

There is a show tonight in the Highwood, John. There will be all sorts of people to play music there. We must go tonight to the Highwood, John. We’ll breathe in the music and the cold-starred air.

——

And Cornelius has taken down the moon — hasn’t he? — with gleam-of-eye and giddying snout and his touch on the wheel is delicate as the spring, here a soft tip, there a glanced tap for each swerve of the road as it runs the country and turns.

Oh this is the knack of it — John can see clearly now — the carefree life, and he envies him the spring.

And before we know it, John? The summer proper will be in on top of us and the woods will be whispering.

Fuck the whispering woods, Cornelius. Just get me to my fucking island.

But he is snagged again; he turns helplessly.

How’d you mean, about woods?

Cornelius beams—

There are things we can’t describe, he says.

Go on?

What we see around us is only at the ten per cent level, John.

Of?

The reality.

And what’s the leftover?

Unseen.

How’d you mean?

Well, he says. The way sometimes you’d walk across a field and a sense of elation would come over you. Are you with me?

Okay…

You’re half risen from the skin. The feet are not touching the stones. The little heart is about to hop out of your chest from sheer fucken joy. And the strange thing about it?

Go on.

That patch of happiness could be floating around the field for the last ten years. Or for the last three hundred and fifty years. Out of love that was had there or a child that was playing or an old friend that was found again after a long time lost. Whatever it was, it caused a great happy feeling and it was left there in the field. You’re after walking into it. And for half a minute you’re lifted and soaring but then you’re out the far side again and back into your own poor stride and woes.

You’d find a sadness just the same?

Or an evil, John. Or a blackness. Or terror, John, or fucken terror, because there’s plenty of terror in the world. Always was and has been.

A soft whisper—

I mean take a look out the window.

A sweep of the arm for the greys and sea-greens of the moonfull hills, the pale night as they pass by—

I mean why’d you think I’ve the fucken foot down, John?

——

In the darkness of a sudden valley the van is brought to a halt. Its engine ceases apologetically. Cornelius raises delicate business—

The suit is fine. I’ll say again I’m inclined against the running shoes. But here…

He presents a tub of hair cream:

A pawful of this gentleman, John.

He greases back his hair. He checks his look in the rearview. He arranges a fag in the corner of the gob for a spiv’s face, a nylon-dealer’s — he has a Second War face.

Take the spectacles off, John. Thank you. Now try these boys for me?

Bloody hell.

My poor dead father’s prescription-issue. The misfortunate man couldn’t see his own hand half the time nor the plate in front of him.

The lenses are so thick the world comes down to just blurs and vague shapes. Everything is abstracted. He climbs out of the van. He is close to moving water. It is a warm night in the Maytime. The dark water laps. He looks over the tops of the glasses and examines his reflection in the van’s window. Cornelius climbs down for an inspection also and at once chokes back a sob.